Deconstructing
Indonesia

To understand the idea of Indonesia, we must first begin to grapple with nationalism. We start with Benedict Anderson's argument that far from being a given, nations are communities that must be imagined into existence.

Dutch rule as well as a rapidly globalizing world led to the birth of a new elite caught between multiple worlds, fraught with tensions of unbelonging that propelled these individuals to imagine a new kind of identity. To understand this, we'll enlist as our psychological guides some of the most eloquent figures of the period – Soewardi Soerjaningrat and R. A. Kartini – as well as two giants of Indonesian literature: Marah Rusli, and Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

We begin to tease out the idea of Indonesia by engaging with its clearest and most forceful champion and articulator: Sukarno. Dragged in front of a Dutch court, he embarks on his landmark defense – not just of himself – but as the spokesperson of a people beggared by colonial rule. This defense – Indonesia's gugatan – begins with an indictment of the Dutch colonial system, not just as a system of domination, but of capitalist extraction.

In 1825 Java’s old order rose up against encroaching European colonialism. What – and who – were the Javanese rebels fighting for?

Sukarno's indictment of Dutch capitalist exploitation continues with the consolidation of Dutch rule over the East Indies. As new economic demands and pressures grew with the development of global capitalism, so did the intensification of Dutch colonial interference as it tried to shape Indies society into an instrument for its own economic ends. To understand this, we'll be looking at cultuurstelsel and the liberal period of Dutch colonial rule through the analytical lenses of two thinkers: Karl Polanyi and Syed Hussein Alatas. In the process, we learn that the Dutch colonial project was a system of market and moral coercion.

Sukarno's defense culminates in a manifesto for Indonesian nationhood and independence. Far from being a mere rejection of Dutch rule, this was also an active attempt to create a genuinely new sense of identity. We'll explore the contours of this new identity by exploring the latter portions of Sukarno's defense speech, as well as his other speeches and writings.

So far, we have focused on an Indonesia conceptualized by its elite. But what of its masses? Today we explore how Indonesian-ness was understood and experienced by the greater mass of a society deeply unfamiliar with the cultural headspace of its elite. We look at its deeply emotive and symbolic content, and how the Japanese invasion supercharged these elements into a nationwide movement.

What is revolution? Is it an act of heroic rebirth where the demons of the past are exorcised by the angels of the new, or a raging fire that devours everything in its path? These debates will come to the fore as Indonesia steers its way through its own national revolution, one that we will trace through the confrontation between two major figures of the revolution: Sutan Sjahrir, and Tan Malaka.

Nationalism is an inherently unifying and totalizing force. But what happens when other identities begin to encroach on certain visions of what it means to be Indonesian? We'll see this in later modules with ethnic regionalisms and ideological clashes. Today though, we'll pay special attention on that most distant frontier of Indonesian identity and those who inhabit that uneasy space: its Arab and Chinese minorities.